LG announced its quarterly earnings on Wednesday and the results were favorable for its mobile division. After six straight quarterly losses, the handset division posted an operating profit of 12 billion won ($10.7 million). This beats Wall Street estimates which predicted the company would lose 12.9 billion won ($11 million) and is better than the 261 billion won ($232 million) loss it posted in Q4 2010.
LG didn’t give a break down of smartphone versus feature phone sales, but did confirm it sold 17.7 million phones in the quarter. This is less than the 30.6 million it sold in the same quarter last year and is also down from 21.1 million it sold in Q3 2011. Overall, LG’s handset sales fell 18 percent, but that’s not necessarily unwelcome news. This combination of falling sales and rising profits suggests LG is selling more of its higher-priced smartphones. LG introduced the Optimus line with the intention of boosting its smartphone business, and these quarterly results suggest this strategy may be starting to pay off.
[Via LG and Fierce Wireless]